


Lucky Bad Luck

by nchi_wana



Category: Et Cetera (Manga)
Genre: Accidents, Bad Luck, Gen, Original Character(s), Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-15
Updated: 2012-08-15
Packaged: 2018-01-03 20:51:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,645
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1072927
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nchi_wana/pseuds/nchi_wana
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mingchao catches a bizarre case of misfortune, but it seems everyone except her is affected by it! How can she break the curse?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lucky Bad Luck

**Author's Note:**

> This is related to my previous fanfictions. After _Déjà Vu_ and during _The Zodiac Vendetta_ , Mingchao and Baskerville were living with a millionaire named Elwood Belgrade.

Mingchao scrambled back as the mirror fell. Glittering bits of glass exploded from its face, catching the light of the morning sun from the bedroom window. Mingchao stared at the mess in amazement.

Footsteps pounded up the stairs and her door flew open. Baskerville stood panting, his long blond hair unkempt about his shoulders. Judging by his appearance, he’d been in the process of dressing. He wore a pair of black trousers and a half-buttoned, white-collared shirt. The shirt hung loose at his hips.

“What was that? Are you all right?” he asked.

Mingchao glanced from him to the mirror. “Yeah. It just fell off the wall!”

Her friend surveyed the scene. “Well, get back before you cut yourself. I’ll go get Eska and we’ll help clean up.

Mingchao stepped away from the glass and watched her feet to avoid small, unseen shards. Still dressed in her nightgown with bare feet, the slivers posed a hazard. She bit her lower lip and grasped at a lock of her hair to wrap it around a finger.

The young maid Eska arrived with a bucket to put the pieces in. She noted Mingchao and the mirror, and her eyes softened as she smiled with pity.

“Seven years of bad luck, Mingchao,” she said.

The girl stiffened. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means if you break a mirror, you get seven years of bad luck.”

“That’s a lot!”

Baskerville sighed like it was the dumbest thing he’d ever heard. “That’s just an old superstition. It’s not true. Eska’s just pulling your leg.”

The maid stifled a giggle. She went into the room and picked up the pieces. Baskerville knelt to help and Mingchao joined them.

When the job was done, Mingchao dressed in her usual outfit of a red shirt and blue trousers, but she couldn’t get over what Eska said. She’d never heard of that superstition before, and it began to worry her. Her grandfather had believed in good fortune and bad fortune, and he’d raised Mingchao with the same beliefs. For most of her life she’d had good luck, but will she now?

She regarded the wall where the mirror had hung. It had fallen by itself when she admired her reflection. Maybe one of the hooks in the back came loose? But upon closer examination, they appeared firmly in place. What could’ve caused the mirror to fall?

Mingchao would never find the answer.

She headed off to school. She used to go to a more prestigious institution because Elwood, the millionaire they lived with, had paid for her to go there, but she had trouble fitting in. She then asked to be placed in a public school with the working class children. Really, though, she didn’t like school, but Baskerville had insisted it was for her own good. She at least enjoyed the company of others her own age.

The incident with the mirror and Eska’s remark faded from her memory. After school, she planned to run errands with Baskerville.

School went off without a hitch. Mingchao believed Baskerville was correct, that the broken mirror story was just a superstition. However, a voice whispered a warning in the back of her mind, but she smothered it and chose to ignore it.

_It’s just my own worries._

As she started for home, she headed downtown. Brick buildings lined the streets, some of which stood in various stages of reconstruction. A large fire had torn through the town a few months ago. Groups of workers labored away to lay down new bricks and replace windows. Blocked sidewalks made it difficult for pedestrians, so Mingchao decided to cross the road.

A shout stopped the girl in her tracks. A stagecoach barreled down the street, and the man sitting in the front seat tried to yank on the reins to stop the horses to no avail.

Mingchao stood frozen. As the beasts came closer, the stagecoach lurched and tilted, flinging the driver to one side with the reins in his hands. The sudden movement in their bits jerked the horses in a hard turn, and they rushed by the girl. The air whistled past her ear. The coach missed her by inches.

It was over as soon as it happened. A wheel rolled and wobbled past Mingchao. She broke herself away and rushed to the stagecoach.

“Are you okay, mister?” she asked the driver with worry.

The man jumped from his seat to make sure his animals were okay. “I should ask _you_ that! How come you didn’t move? You could’ve been killed!”

“I’m not sure what happened. It was like my brain stopped working or something.” Then she slapped her hands to her mouth. “Oh, no,” she muffled. “It’s… It’s the bad luck!”

“Bad luck?” the driver repeated with a raised brow. “Did I just hear you correctly?”

She said nothing more and booked it down the street to get as far away from the stagecoach as possible.

_It’s happening! It’s because I broke the mirror!_

Mingchao tried to think of all the ways to break curses like this. Her grandpa had taught her many traditional Chinese methods, but this town lacked Chinese-owned shops with charms and cures, and she didn’t know a single Chinese individual here. She’d have to make do with what she had on hand.

Her pace slowed as she thought. _But why did the stagecoach lose a wheel like that? If I’m cursed, I should’ve been killed or at least maimed._ In the end, however, she remained unharmed. What could this mean?

As she walked, a person passed her and vented an obscenity. Mingchao whirled around to see that a man, dressed in expensive clothing, had caught his foot in a pile of horse manure on the boardwalk. He pulled his foot, clad in a polished shoe, out of the muck with a grimace. Flies swarmed around the fresh feces.

“How did something like this get here?” the man griped. He scraped the manure off his shoe on the edge of the boardwalk.

Mingchao trotted away. _What was that all about? How did poop get there? I didn’t see it before. Good thing I wasn’t the one who stepped in it._

She crossed the street again and this time she made sure to check both directions before doing so. She dodged a large pothole filled with muddy water. Knowing she didn’t fall in gave her relief.

When she made it to the other side, a plaintive cry split the air. A woman had somehow tripped and fallen face-first into the puddle, soaking her beautiful dress. She spat out water while a man hurried over to help her up. The woman appeared miserable and ashamed.

Mingchao watched in horror. She formulated an idea, but she didn’t want to consider its possibility.

_I’ve gotta get home!_

She turned away and forged ahead, but it wasn’t over yet. On her way she saw a man fall off his horse when his saddle came loose. A door broke off its hinge and fell as a woman left a building. A vendor lost his produce when the vegetables slid and tumbled off their stand. It seemed every person Mingchao passed experienced some sort of misfortune.

There was no denying the truth. She may have bad luck, but it affected _other people_.

Mingchao had no choice but to keep going until she reached home. But what would happen then? Would Elwood’s house burn down?

No. She couldn’t go home, not until she broke this curse. As she contemplated this, a familiar figure came down the street toward her. Baskerville waved and smiled when he saw her.

“Mingchao,” he said, “I’ve been looking for you.”

The girl whipped about and ran, leaving her friend confused. He called after her, but she refused to look back.

 _There’s no way I’m letting my bad luck hurt him! I have to get home somehow without affecting other people. If I can get there, I can get into my room and try to find a charm._ There had to be at least a little something hidden away.

She remembered a trail that led up through the woods and toward Elwood’s house, one few people used. If she took that, it was less likely she’d run into other people.

She couldn’t reach the trailhead without a few more incidents along the way. Someone threw the contents of their chamber pot out a window and it landed on a lady’s head. A child tripped in a small hole in the road and sprained his ankle. A horse threw its rider.

When she at last found the trail, she stood behind a tree to catch her breath. Now she knew for sure this whole affair started with the broken mirror. Eska had been right all along.

Mingchao bounded down the trail, and it took her another five minutes of solid running to reach Elwood’s house, but before she left the safety of the woods she made sure no one was around.  When it seemed clear, she sped toward the door, flung it open, rushed up the stairs, and prayed she’d see no one on the way up.

Upon entering her room, the girl gave herself a few moments. She fished through her dresser drawers and a large armoire, but even as she emptied their contents she couldn’t find a single charm. She could’ve sworn a Chinese coin was somewhere, but it was like searching for a needle in a haystack.

Defeated, she plopped down on a pile of clothes in the middle of the floor with a moan. “What am I going to do? I have to find something—“

A thought struck her as her eyes settled on something partially concealed under a shirt. She reached over and grabbed up the Eto Gun, which she had accidentally thrown in her hurry to empty the drawers. She hadn’t used it in a while, and so had it put away to keep it safe. But thinking about it now, it might be helpful. It had saved her and her friends’ lives so many times in the past she could consider it good luck in itself.

She clutched it to her chest with gratefulness. _If I carry this around, maybe it’ll stop making my misfortune rub off on other people. You can do that for me, can’t you, Eto Gun?_ But deep inside she couldn’t be certain this was the solution.

A door slammed downstairs and interrupted her thoughts. Baskerville’s voice echoed as he spoke with someone about what had happened earlier. Eska responded.

 _Great, now how am I supposed to get out of the house without running into them?_ If the Eto Gun was a source of a good fortune, then maybe she didn’t need to worry?

She decided to take a chance. She got up and ambled down the stairs where the other two conversed at the bottom.

Baskerville saw her descend. “Mingchao! What was that all about? Why did you run away?” Concern marked his features when he saw the Eto Gun in her hand. “Are you all right?”

Mingchao came down the last few steps and nodded. “I think so.” Tears welled in her eyes. “That mirror I broke this morning… It really did give me bad luck!” She explained every incident she had witnessed on her way home. Her friends stood confounded by the tale.

Baskerville knelt and placed his hands on her shoulders. Mingchao had gained a few inches over the past few months, so he raised his head to address her.

“I told you earlier it’s just a superstition. Because you believe it, you only think you see these things.”

Eska nodded with a regretful look. “He’s right, Mingchao. I was just teasing you. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to frighten you.”

The girl gripped her strange gun. “I know, but… I’ve never seen anything like it before!” She squeezed her eyes shut and tears dripped down her cheeks. “I’ve _become_ the curse!”

Baskerville pulled her into a hug. “Stop believing it and you’ll see all those things will go away.”

Mingchao nodded with her cheek against his shoulder. “I don’t want to hurt you or anyone else here.”

“You won’t.”

When she managed to calm down, her friend changed the subject. He took a note from his jacket and handed it to her.

“These are a few things I want you to get at the grocer in town,” he said. “I have another list Elwood wants me to do.”

The girl read the note. She still didn’t want to go back into town, but she wanted to take his advice. Maybe she had been too gullible, but she would take the Eto Gun with her anyway.

With a bit more coaxing, Baskerville got her to leave the house, and she went into town, but she decided to use the trail, just in case.

Over and over in her mind she kept telling herself the curse wasn’t real, and it seemed to soothe her nerves. Everything appeared fine as she came into downtown. She didn’t see anyone so much as stub a toe. Was it because she stopped believing in the bad luck, or was it because of her gun? She couldn’t know for sure.

Mingchao had a cloth bag filled with groceries by the time she finished. When she left the grocer, a man stalked down the boardwalk toward her. He was tall, thin, and incredibly pale. He almost had no eyebrows, and the color of his gray, hooded eyes reminded Mingchao of a stormy sky. Though still young, his bald head gleamed in the sunlight. The long, black coat he wore fluttered as he walked.

As they passed one another, the man glanced at Mingchao, and a chill ran up her spine. She peeked over her shoulder at him once he was gone.

 _That’s weird. I’ve never seen him around here before._ She’d gotten to know quite a few people who frequented this neighborhood. That man was a stranger.

She took the trail back home, not fully convinced she didn’t have bad luck. As she drew close to the house, a noise in the woods stopped her. It sounded like a shout. A steep hillside covered with trees rose to her right, but to her left plunged a deep gully with a small creek in it. She couldn’t see anyone on the trail, so she moved to the gully first. A chunk of earth gave way under her foot near the edge, and Mingchao slid down the slope to the creek. Her groceries--food and cans--rolled down to meet her.

She regained her footing at the bottom, her wet clothes clinging to her uncomfortably. She stared up at the slope in disbelief.

“No way, no way,” she mumbled. “The bad luck… Is it affecting _me_ now?”

_But I fell because I came too close to the edge. It’s not impossible._

The Eto Gun had been caught in the exposed root of a tree about halfway up, so Mingchao gathered what groceries she could salvage and climbed the slope to grab her gun and stick it in her sash. Below her, she heard another shout. It echoed, as if distant.

Curious now, she hefted the bag over her shoulder and scaled back down the hillside toward the creek. She followed the stream and found something remarkable. A tunnel entrance, embedded in the slope, sat just above the water, but it wasn’t an ordinary tunnel from what Mingchao could see. Stone cobbles lined the semi-circular mouth, and it resembled the exit to a storm drain. But why would something like this be in the woods so close to Elwood’s house?

Again she heard another distant shout, this time from within the tunnel. The hair of the back of her neck stood on end. _Is that a kid I hear down there? Sounds like more than one._

Mingchao backed away from the hole. After everything that happened that day, she felt leery about putting herself in some dark hole when she had no idea where it would lead. But what if someone was stuck down there or exploring a dangerous place where they shouldn’t be? She knew all too well that kind of experience. She couldn’t just let them get hurt.

She decided to give a holler. “Hello! Is someone down there?” Her call echoed into oblivion and came back. No answer returned. Water dripped in the silence, and cold air poured from the hole. The darkness was complete. She couldn’t see a thing.

Mingchao slipped off her bag and pulled out the Eto Gun. With reluctance she stepped into the tunnel and called out once more, but received no answer. She kept hearing children’s voices and was certain now there were people down there somewhere.

With only enough room to crouch, she shuffled along down the tunnel until the light weakened. She breathed in cold, damp earth, and the sound of her feet scraping the floor reverberated around her. Soft moss nestled in the numerous crevices between the cobbles.

Mingchao considered returning home to get a lamp, but the voices receded. If she left now, she’d lose whoever was down here.

She yelled. “Hey! What are you doing down here? It’s dangerous!”

She inched along until her feet slipped on the wet surface. She dropped and slid. Her screams rebounded off the walls. Her fingers scratched for a handhold. The light vanished, and blackness enveloped her. When she reached the bottom, she blinked to get her eyes to adjust. A glow wavered down the tunnel.

_So there are people here after all!_

“H-Hey! Come back!” she cried.

She got to her feet and found the tunnel had widened to where she could stand up, although the ceiling still hung low. Without waiting, Mingchao started down passage so she wouldn’t lose the glow.

_If I’m caught down here alone, I’m a goner. I don’t think I could climb back out._

Much to her relief, the light came closer, and so did the voices. There had to be at least three people, all children, but she couldn’t see them yet. The passage curved and declined before flattening out again, and then declined once more. She calculated she must’ve been traveling for at least ten minutes. The floor had become drier, which likely meant no water had flowed through here for some time.

She reached the lantern’s halo, but stayed outside its ring. Three children gabbed together—three, as Mingchao had suspected, one boy and two girls. One girl with long blond hair wore a dirty pink dress and held the lantern. Another girl with short brown hair had a casual blue dress, whereas the boy sported a pair of mud-spattered overalls. These two looked alike, as if they were twins.

“Hey, someone’s been following us!” the boy said as he turned to Mingchao.

She advanced into the ring of light and put her hands on her hips. “What do you kids think you’re doing down here? It’s dangerous.”

“Pot calling the kettle black,” the boy shot back. “What are _you_ doing down here? Why are you following us?”

“I heard you down here. Now you guys better scram before someone gets hurt.”

“No way. Besides, we’ve been here before and we know how to get out just fine.”

This gave Mingchao pause. “Really? Do you go back that way?” She gestured behind her.

The girl in the blue dress spoke. “No. There’s an end, but it’s still a ways away. Would you like to come with us?”

The blond girl nodded avidly in encouragement.

Mingchao looked back. She didn’t really have a choice. “I guess. My name’s Mingchao, by the way.”

“My name is Zona,” the girl in the blue dress said. “And that’s my brother Byron.”

Byron crinkled his nose.

“And I’m Delsie,” said the blond girl in a soft voice. “We come down here a lot because it’s fun to explore. We’ve never been hurt, so don’t worry.”

Their confidence put Mingchao somewhat at ease.

They traveled down the tunnel, but their conversations halted. The uneventful trip made Mingchao wonder why these children were exploring here in the first place. Not even a rat scurried in the darkness.

 _I’m stuck down here with people I only just met, and I don’t know where we’re going or why we’re here at all. I can’t tell if my bad luck went away or not. Looks to me like I still have it!_ Now she worried it would start affecting these kids, too. _Just don’t believe it…_

They walked along for another ten minutes before they approached a fork in the passage. They followed the left fork, which inclined and then straightened again.

A short while later they stopped. Delsie, in the lead with the lantern, held the light out in front of her. She paused, and nodded to the others. Crouching down, her feet scraped forward on the floor of the tunnel. Then, she disappeared.

“Wh-Where did she go?” Mingchao said. “She’s gone!”

“She’s not gone, you dolt,” said Bryon. “She went down. There’s a cave down there.”

Mingchao didn’t like caves very much; too many bad memories.

They trailed after Delsie to the bottom of the tunnel, but when the girl lifted the lantern for them to see where they were Mingchao said, “This isn’t a cave. This is someone’s basement!”

Heavy stone, similar to the kind in the passage, lined the walls of the expansive room. The ceiling rose several feet above their heads and aside from a few crates and boxes the basement sat empty.

Byron blushed. “Well, we like to _pretend_ it’s a cave, one filled with treasure.” He motioned toward one dark corner. “That’s where we keep all the neat stuff we find.”

“So how do we get out?”

Zona pointed overhead to a spot they couldn’t see. “We can climb up and out another tunnel that leads to the surface.”

Mingchao threw her a quizzical look. “You mean there’s no door to get out?”

The gloom obscured the exit Zona mentioned. Even so, they might get in trouble if they just crawled out of someone’s basement. She sighed at the thought of having to go through another tunnel, though.

“Then let’s go—“

“Hey,” Byron said behind her. “Is that a gun?”

Mingchao had forgotten the Eto Gun she’d slid into her sash. “U-Um, kind of.”

“Is it a toy?”

“No.”

“Can I see it?”

“No! It’s not a toy, so you can’t play with it.”

“But it’s only ‘kind of’ a gun?” Byron folded his arms. “So is it a gun or not?”

Mingchao lifted her chin. “It’s a special kind of gun. It’s lucky. I use it for good luck. And not just anyone can use it.”

The boy scowled at her. “You’re no fun.”

“How does it work?” Zona asked, her eyes sparkling with curiosity. “Does it shoot lucky bullets?”

Mingchao almost laughed at the question. “You could say that.”

“Can you show us?”

Now she hesitated. “Well, this probably isn’t the best place for it. Besides, it’s not even loaded.”

“A lucky, unloaded gun,” said Byron with another scowl. “That thing’s just a dumb toy.”

Mingchao pulled the weapon from her sash. “This isn’t a dumb toy! It’s saved my life a million times. It’s real!”

“It looks weird. Who would make something that ugly? Some dumb person, I’m sure.”

Heat rose in her cheeks. Byron didn’t know he referred to her grandfather. “Well, you’re just a mean kid! You don’t know anything about this gun.”

“Other than it’s lucky but unloaded?”

“Guys,” Zona said, stepping between them. “Let’s not fight. Mingchao wants to leave, so let’s lead her out.”

Zona, Byron, and Delsie made their way to the next tunnel while Mingchao stood back, still fuming over what the boy had said.

_What a mean little snot. What’s his problem anyway? He said all that just because I wouldn’t let him touch it?_

She held up the Eto Gun in the waning light of the lantern. It’s bulbous, metallic surface glinted despite being a little dirty, its small holes like black dots in the increasing shadow. Well, maybe it was a little ugly, but Byron’s words still hurt her feelings.

_It’s not a dumb gun and my grandpa wasn’t dumb for making it. That kid has no idea what I’ve gone through with it._

She pulled the trigger a few times with the muzzle pointed up, and a glow emanated from the barrel. A blast of energy shot forth from the Eto Gun and knocked her over. The three friends on the other side of the basement fell back and covered their heads with their arms.

Mingchao didn’t have time to see what kind of bullet it was, nor could she remember the last time she loaded the gun. As the brightness faded, she looked up at a small hole the bullet had created in the ceiling. Odd, she thought, since usually a bullet from the Eto Gun was quite destructive. Had it been a rat bullet?

The ceiling cracked. Bits of dirt fell on Mingchao’s face and head.

“Uh, oh…”

Everyone scattered as enormous chunks of the ceiling fell with a rumble. Mingchao stood against one wall, while the three friends pressed against the opposite. They watched in terror as the hole in the ceiling widened.

When it was over, Mingchao couldn’t see for all the dust. The others coughed in the haze. A mountain of rubble sat piled in the middle of the room and a prostrate figure lay on top of it.

Mingchao gasped. “Oh, no! Someone’s been hurt!”

She pushed away from the wall and clambered up the pile to reach the figure, but stopped short when she saw the person’s face. It was the man with the long black coat and pale skin she had seen on the street earlier that day.

A voice called out from above. “Hey!” Several people, men and women, stared down from the hole in the ceiling with startled expressions. “Is he dead?”

“What?”

The man had something clutched in his hand. Bank notes swirled over the rubble and fluttered down from the hole.

“He tried to rob the bank,” a woman said. “He was about ready to escape when this happened.”

Money still stuffed the bag in the man’s hand, but he’d dropped another. It rested a few feet down the mound of debris. Money spilled out of it in bundles.

“Wow!” said Byron as he came out of the shadows. “You mean this guy’s a bank robber? Amazing! We stopped a crime.”

“You mean _I_ stopped a crime,” said Mingchao. “That was my gun that went off. I didn’t even know it was loaded.”

They helped the townspeople and some lawmen lift the robber out of the basement. Once the lawmen pulled the children out, they admonished the group for their carelessness and sent them home.

At Elwood’s house, Mingchao told Baskerville why she’d been so late. He didn’t seem surprised since it was well known what kind of adventures she tended to get into. This wasn’t the first, and it certainly wouldn’t the last.

“So in the end, your bad luck turned out to be lucky,” said Baskerville as they sat in the parlor together.

“But I thought you said it wasn’t true? And besides, I’ve never heard of bad luck being lucky. That’s impossible!”

“But let’s imagine it was true. Your bad luck affected other people, but the way in which it affected just _one_ particular person ended up being lucky for other people. So the bad luck begat good luck.”

The girl gawked at him. “Are you on drugs again?”

Baskerville’s face fell. “Mingchao…”

But it may have been the incident at the bank was the cure for her misfortune, because from that day onward it never came back.

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